The First Tools

What if the first technology was just a stone? Tristan Hughes and Dr. Emma Finestone, - Curator and the Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz Endowed Chair of Humans Origins at Cleveland Museum of Natural History - travel back over 3 million years to Africa, where early hominins began shaping stone tools that transformed survival, diet, and behaviour. From the earliest finds to the widespread tool making industry in northern Tanzania, they explore who made these tools, how they worked, and why they matter. MORE Rise of Humans Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rise-of-humans/id1520403988?i=1000702067254 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/1vXxIXCruQh4w90EuawE6E Origins of the Wheel Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/origins-of-the-wheel/id1520403988?i=1000679123894 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/62YIJi5j6sCEJgh7SNWSnM Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Hannah Feodorov. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:36Tristan Hughes?

  Africa, three million years ago. And our distant ancestors have just discovered an ingenious solution to their limitations. They may not be as fast as the cheetah, as powerful as the hippopotamus, as agile as the antelope. But from now on, bit by bit by bit, this imbalance of power in the ancient African landscape will slowly start to shift. At some point, one of these hominins picks up a stone, weathered and unremarkable. Then, they smash it against another rock.

• 1:13Tristan Hughes?

  They modify it, giving them a sharper object, a tool to forage wild plants, to craft wood, to slice flesh from bone, to reach the marrow hidden within. No longer is this the world as it is. This is changing it. And in that long-lost moment, something novel is born: the first technology. So what do we know about the people who made these earliest tools? And how big a leap in our evolutionary story really was this moment? Welcome to The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we are travelling back millions of years

• 1:56Tristan Hughes?

  to the very infancy of technology itself, unearthing the origins of this prehistoric industrial revolution that would alter the course of human history forever. Our guest today is Dr Emma Finestone, Associate Curator of Human Origins at Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

• 2:26Tristan Hughes?

  Emma, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Thanks, I'm really glad to be here.

• 2:31Tristan Hughes?

  And to talk about the earliest tools, I mean, Emma, I feel it's important stating right at the beginning that this is a story that takes us long before our species, Homo sapiens, long before Neanderthals do. This is a story that takes us back over a million years. It's incredible.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's actually over several million years. So yeah, tools are a broad thing. It's not just humans.

• 2:53Tristan Hughes?

  And talking about a broad term, I mean, the word tool, what do we mean? How do we classify a tool?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question. And you might not find the answer particularly helpful because it's also very broad. So a tool is really any object that's used to obtain an outcome or a function. It doesn't even have to be modified. So by this definition of a tool, many, many animals use tools. It's not just humans. It's an object that helps us to obtain an outcome. So that includes things that birds do. I mean, if you're listening, you might think even your dog is maybe using tools sometimes. But what makes human tool use unique is that we take it beyond that initial definition.

• 3:39Tristan Hughes?

  And taking it beyond that initial definition, is that when we're talking about deliberate modification of an object like a stone for a particular function?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  That is part of it, but other animals actually do that as well. The longer we've studied tools, the more and more messy it gets in trying to figure out what is distinctly human about the ways that we use tools. So what we do is we don't just use an object for an outcome, but we modify the object and we make things. However, there are other animals that do that too, including other primates. What humans really do with tools, though, is that we Have cumulative culture, so we modify our tools and they are passed from generation to generation. There's a lot of debate about when this begins, but the scale at which

• 4:27Speaker 01

  we use tools and the way that we've really begun to use tools to solve adaptive problems and rely on tools for our survival is beyond the scope of any other animal.

• 4:38Tristan Hughes?

  So my next question was going to be like, well, how far back then can we go? We've won the earliest tools were made. But from what you're saying there, Emma, because it's such a broad term and depending how we're reviewing this, I mean, that could take us back even more millions of years if we're thinking actually if it's just a natural object that that was just used, we just don't know, the evidence isn't there from the surviving archaeological record.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  The way that a lot of non-human primates tool use works is that, like, for example, chimpanzees will use sticks for termite fishing. So they'll modify a stick and then they'll stick it in a termite mound and they'll eat the termites. So they're modifying an object to eat termites. A stick isn't going to fossilize. So when we're dealing with the archaeological record, we can only begin to see tool use once we start to see modified rocks. So we base our understanding of human tool use in an evolutionary context. We base it off of when we see modified rocks because those are preserved, they don't disintegrate. But I think most archaeologists would agree that all of our lineage, even before modified

• 5:43Speaker 01

  rocks enter the archaeological record, were using tools in one way or another.

• 5:48Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, I think I'll still try and make sure that the producer calls this episode the first tools rather than the first modified rocks because it's not quite the same. But we will be focusing on those earliest modified rocks. So Emma, I mean, how far back are we going with these earliest, oh, fine, earliest and modified rocks?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  We can call them stone tools. That might be easier.

• 6:08Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, let's do it.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, so the earliest stone tools are found 3.3 million years ago in West Turkana, Kenya, at a site called Lamekwe III. And then those tools, which are called the Lamekwean industry, disappear from the archaeological record. And then at around 2.9, we see the next industry, which is called the Oldowan, which is the industry that I study. It's the first widespread and persistent tool industry. So rather than appearing in one place at one time, it spreads all across Africa and out of Africa, and it evolves and persists for over a million years in time. So 3.3 is the earliest stone tools, and then 2.9 is when we get a record that becomes

• 6:54Speaker 01

  continuous.

• 6:55Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, so Lamekwe is almost, has the gold medal for the oldest, but as you're saying, in regards to the significance, in regards to the amount of archaeological discoveries made, this other technology slightly later, a few hundred thousands of years later, the Oldowan, it becomes more widespread. I don't want to use the word more important, but I guess more prominent in the surviving archaeological record.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yes, and we know a lot more about it because there are so many sites. It's practiced by more hominins. It shows up more places, so we're able to learn more from it. But also, I think you could make the argument that it is more important to the hominins at that stage because they're all practicing it in different places through time. However, I will say that the Lamekwean, um, we weren't even looking for tools 3.3 million years ago until these were discovered in 2016. So right now, it's localized to West Turkana, Kenya, but I do suspect that that could change, and perhaps the Lamekweans a little bit more widespread and persistent than what we currently understand.

• 7:54Tristan Hughes?

  Gosh, okay. And before kind of exploring the key differences between the two, Amy, you've mentioned these sites, so over 3 million years ago for Lamekwe, almost 3 million years for Oldowan. I've got to ask about the dating first off. How can you and your colleagues, how can you date these tools?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question and it's its own specialty. So we have geologists who specialize in dating sites that come to our sites and help us to figure out how old they are. For a lot of the Oldowan sites and the Lomacquian sites, they're able to date because there's a lot of volcanic activity in the past in those regions. And the volcanic ash, you can actually date because there's parts in the volcanic ash that decay at a known rate and they're able to measure how long ago it was that the volcanic ash erupted and then settled on the landscape. So when you find an archaeological assemblage, whether it's below or above a specific layer of volcanic ash, that constrains what time period you're dealing with.

• 8:53Tristan Hughes?

  And what sorts of landscape should we be imagining where these tools have been discovered, including of course, the sites that you've been working on in Western Kenya?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question. So in the past, for example, at the site I work at, we have reconstructed what the past environment looked like. It's on the modern shores of Lake Victoria, but Lake Victoria was not present at the time. The lake developed later. But there was a freshwater spring in the past that was nearby, so there would have been access to fresh water. A lot of sites obviously accumulate around places where there's access to water and also access to stone material. So stones are often found in rivers, riverbeds, streams, and a lot of sites accumulate in those places because you need those resources in order to make the tools. And then there also has to be food resources.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  And this can vary a lot from site to site. Like the site I work at is more wooded and there's a stream along a channel with some woody cover. Other sites are more open and grassland dominated, but wherever it is, there has to be access to stones, access to food resources, and proximity to water generally.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Something interesting is that the 2.9 million year old Oldowan site, which is where I work, isn't near good quality stones. And our research has shown that they actually forged for stones over distances of over 10 kilometres. So it doesn't have to be right next to a high quality source of stone, but you need to be somewhere in the vicinity of able to access high quality stones to make tools, food resources, whether it's plant or animal materials to eat. And then also generally having access to water, some form of shade is often important too.

• 10:37Tristan Hughes?

  But that's really interesting there, Emma, because this seems to be another area where geology is really, really helpful. Whether it's with big Stone Age monuments from the last few thousands of years, like stone circles and so on, or back to like your Oldowan site 2.9 million years ago. By looking at the geology of the rocks, let's say of these early tools, is figuring out the source, you know, whereabouts they were found, and then getting a sense of the distances involved of these, these early humans that used them, you know, almost 3 million years ago.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and to figure out where the stones were coming from, it was actually quite complicated and it took years to survey all of the ancient riverbeds. We actually looked at the geochemistry of the different rock types and then of the tool assemblage. So we linked the artifacts to their sources from the geochemistry. So what types of trace elements are present in the rocks? What types of rocks are present in different ancient river systems? And that's how we were able to figure out where the rocks were coming from. So it's a good deal of geology.

• 11:40Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's now delve into Lamecuan versus Oldowan. So you have these two different types of technologies, very early technologies. Emma, can you describe both of them and then explain how they differ?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  So with Oldowan tools, you're able to produce sharp cutting edges by, the most common technique they would use is they'd use both hands and they would bash one rock against another, which sounds simple, but it's actually quite hard to do your first time. You probably won't get a sharp cutting edge detached. You need to strike it at exactly the right angle and in the right In order for a sharp piece to pop off that has, it's like a stone knife. It has a sharp cutting edge that actually is sharp enough in our experimental studies. We use it to butcher a variety of animals that like at a goat roast sometimes will do experimental studies will we use flakes that we make to to butcher goats that we were of course already eating and to process

• 12:39Speaker 01

  different types of plant materials, even ones that are quite hard. So these stone knives are really sharp. They're as sharp as the knives we have now, depending on the type of stone that you use. But some stones can produce really sharp knives and you have to actually be careful when you're napping them to not cut yourself. So that is the Oldowan generally is that there's two stones held in hand that you fracture and then you get this sharp piece which is called a flake. There's other ways to produce Oldowan tools, but that is the most common and the two stones are the size that you can hold them in your hand. Now the Lomacuan is also focused on producing stone knives, but the tools are much bigger and the method for producing them is different.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  The most common way that Lomacuan toolmakers seem to have produced tools is either by a type of percussion where they just have a stationary anvil on the ground and they have a core that they strike on the stationary anvil and a flake, the sharp cutting piece pops off. So they're striking two rocks together, but they're not holding them in their hand. It's there's an anvil stationary on the ground. Or there's a type of percussion called bipolar percussion where you place one rock between an anvil and then you smash the top of it. And so the impact coming from both sides, that's why it's called bipolar, will shatter off pieces that have sharp flakes. This is a technique also used sometimes in the Oldowan, but not as often.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  And it's also more similar to the technique that non-human primates would use because it's similar to nutcracking, but instead of the nut being smashed against the anvil and struck from above, it's a stone that is and it produces these flakes that have sharp cutting edges, which is it seems like that is really what the toolmakers are after is the cutting tools, both for the Lomacuan and the Oldowan, although they also sometimes pound. Food items using the cores and larger rocks.

• 14:32Tristan Hughes?

  So can you argue that like the leap from Lamequian to Old One, can we say that it is then like a technological leap forwards? How with the Old One, you don't have that anvil. It is just two stones together to create those really, really sharp knives. Is it fair to say that there is a technological leap forwards, a development between these two early technologies?

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say that the older one is another level of refinement, you could say, because holding two stones in a hand and using what we call handheld percussion to produce a flake, it gives you more control over the resulting flake. So you can standardize the size more easily. You can maximize the cutting edge to the mass of the flake. And with the Lamequian techniques, there's not as much control. And so part of this also might have to do with, it takes more manual dexterity to do the handheld percussion and the Lamequian tools, it takes less manual dexterity. So I will say that if a technique works, you don't always need to reinvent the wheel. And so like how we see in the older one,

• 15:37Speaker 01

  they still do bipolar percussion, even though that uses less control. It produces sharp edges that can be used to cut things. So sometimes that's enough.

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• 17:27Tristan Hughes?

  Emma, here on The Ancients, we love delving into the nerdy details, and we're absolutely going to do that with the rocks themselves, because I've got to ask about these, the rocks that were used at the Old Wren sites, including the one you've been working at. Should we be imagining two very hard, I guess like volcanic igneous stones that they're using, or that always one of the stones harder than the other, so they're using the harder stone to kind of bash a little bit off of the one which they can make the tool from? Amy, do we know much about the stones themselves?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and you're right to ask about, does one have to be harder than the other? The hammer stone, which is the one that is fracturing, that is percussing against the core, which is the rock that the flake comes from, has to be harder, because otherwise it would fracture. So the hammer stone needs to be very hard. Sometimes these are igneous rocks, but often it's also rocks that are like quartzite or quartz. At the site I work at, they use both quartz, quartzite, but then also volcanic rocks like rhyolite. Rhyolite is the main one in the region that I work. Different study areas have different types. Of rock, it's usually quartzite, quartz, rhyolite, basalt.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  It's a combination of different types of rock and it doesn't necessarily have to be volcanic, but it does have to be hard. What actually makes volcanic rocks sometimes better than rocks like quartz or quartzite is if there's finer grain sizes, then it fractures more predictably. Quartz and quartz have larger grains and more irregularities. So that makes the resulting flakes sometimes more difficult to control because the grains can cause fractures in ways that a finer grain, like a volcanic material, will fracture more smoothly and predictably. But what really matters is the hardness and the durability. And so if quartz and quartzite are able to produce durable, sharp edges,

• 19:22Speaker 01

  they'll still use those even if they don't fracture as predictably. And you see a lot of assemblages that use quartz, even though quartz is a very difficult material to flake and has often large grain sizes.

• 19:33Tristan Hughes?

  Well, this is the thing, they're not all going to be exactly the same in how they look, but they can still all serve an important function. It's that they don't go to waste almost, Emma.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. They'll use, sometimes we see even really bad materials that they made one flake out of and then they didn't try again. But I suspect that they try to flake most of the rocks that are available to them and then they have preferences for some rocks over others, but any material will do.

• 19:59Tristan Hughes?

  And do we find at these Olduan sites, do we find lots of hammerstones, lots of cores together? In regards to the quantity, when you do find one of these sites, is it notable just how many there are that survive in a small area?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Hammerstones are actually fairly rare. You get less hammerstones. You also get less cores than the detached pieces, but sometimes you can still get a good percentage of them. We have over 20% cores at the Nayanga Assemblage, which is the 2.9 million year old Olduan site that I work at. The most common type are usually what we call angular fragments, which are pieces that flaked off, but unlike a flake, they aren't complete and they don't preserve the elements that we look for on a flake. These are especially common if it's if they're working materials like quartz that fracture less predictably. So actually, most of what you get are what we call angular fragments.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  But most of our analysis focuses on the flakes and the cores, which usually still make up a decent portion of the assemblage. Like I said, cores are 20% of the assemblage that I studied, the 2.9 million year old site. And we had a good number of flakes, too. We had more flakes than we had cores. So you still get a good number of them.

• 21:20Tristan Hughes?

  All right. So function. So what do we think, Emma? These people, whoever made these tools, modified stones, what would they have used them for? What would they have used the flakes for? And I guess what would they have used the cores for?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  That's the question. And we do have a lot of evidence now that can answer it. But when we talked about different types of tools not fossilizing and how that limits our ability to understand what the tools were before stone tools, we have this problem with studying the materials that they would be eating. Because a lot of the materials that they were likely accessing with these tools wouldn't fossilize, like the plants, potentially if they're woodworking, if they're processing fruits, those sorts of things, you're not going to find evidence of them in the archaeological record. What we do have is animal bones that bear the marks from flakes cutting into them.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  So we have cut marks on bones. And so that tells us that at least one of the functions of ancient tools, at least in the Oldowan industry, was accessing animals.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  We have a cut marked hippo at the, actually we have two cut marked hippos published from the site that I work at. So they were, they were accessing even large animals, although these were likely scavenged and not hunted because it's so early in the Oldauan industry. You also find lots of cut marks on antelope in the Oldauan record. A variety of different mammals you see cut marks. So we know from the cut marks that they are accessing meat and also sometimes marrow. So they would break apart a bone to access marrow at the center. But the real unknown is how much of the Oldauan is for things like plant processing or behaviors that aren't associated with butchery.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  And we might suspect that that actually was a huge function of the Oldauan because that's a big part of human diets. And when we're talking about millions of years ago, it was likely the main part of diets for hominins when we're talking like 3.3 million years ago, 2.9. And one way we can get at understanding how much plant processing is happening is looking at, it's called useware and we look at the edges of the stone tool to try to figure out what type of contact material the edge was working because the edge will chip in a different way, whether it's cutting into different types of plants or animals.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  And what we've found at our sites is that plant processing was actually the majority of use. Animal processing was still important, but over 50% of the useware signals plant processing. And also we found evidence of woodworking. So it's possible that they're using these, these stone knives to also shape wood. So it's like using a tool to make another tool, which is really interesting if you think about it, because that's now a step removed from just directly accessing food. You're using a tool to make another tool.

• 24:26Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, so almost kind of the Swiss Army knife equivalent of, of, of three million years ago. And when you're talking about it's kind of cutting plants, should we be thinking like foraging bushes or mushrooms or, or what should we be thinking?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  You swear can't tell you the exact type of food item that they were processing. So we can tell that some are plants that are similar to things like tubers. So think like potatoes, yams, those sorts of things. There's also evidence for for processing things that are more like grasses or reeds. But I imagine it was a wide variety of foraging for different plant materials. Like how you brought up mushrooms, certainly, I think that that would be something that hominins would have eaten. It's just we're limited in the archaeological record to see exactly what the food items were that they were eating when they're not fossilizing. So it's kind of a guessing game.

• 25:22Tristan Hughes?

  Fair enough. But is this somewhere where experimental archaeology can help? At least when, let's say, the function that people might think of straight away, which is the getting meat off the bone of an animal. Do we know how effective an Olduan, a sharp Olduan tool, a flake would have been?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, experimental studies are really the way to get at these questions. And I'll add that the useware is experimental because they're they're experimentally processing different animal and plant materials and then using that to interpret the archaeological record. So experimental studies are really one of the only ways that you're going to fully understand these questions about Olduan use. And the flakes very efficiently can deflesh a carcass. And I mentioned this earlier, but we we do that in the field all the time. And we use the flakes for the experimental useware studies. It works the same as a knife. It takes more than one flake usually because the flakes dull.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  And this is what would have happened for the hominins too, because they discarded flakes, which is why we find them associated with carcasses in the archaeological record. Or else they'd only ever need to make one and they would carry it around with them for their whole life. And then we wouldn't have these assemblages of many, many stone tools. So it takes more than one flake to be able to like efficiently process an animal. But you can definitely do it with a handful of flakes. Especially if it's a type of material that doesn't dull easily. I mentioned that they really prefer hard and durable material and part of that is because you need to have the edge stay sharp for a decent amount of time because

• 27:03Speaker 01

  you'd just be discarding flakes and making new ones all the time if you were using a soft material. So I said anything worked before in terms of stone, but there's some stones that aren't going to be sharp enough and there's some stones that you're going to have to discard quickly. So having the right type of material will lead to a stone knife that can really efficiently process an animal.

• 27:24Tristan Hughes?

  Emma, is the word weapon, is that word banned for when we're going this far back in time? I mean, has there been any thought about, you know, these kind of stones being used as weapons or is that just something we just have no idea about?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  At least in the part of the Old One Record that I work in, we don't even ask that question. It's clear that the stone knives are useful for processing foods, but they are almost certainly scavenging the animals and they're coming across them on the landscape. Now, I'm talking about 2.9, as you move later, they do start to sometimes actively hunt and there's evidence based on the location of where cut marks are in relation to other damage from animals like carnivores that they had primary access to carcasses. But we're not in the time period where we're imagining that they have spheres that they're taking the animal down with.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  So, I mean, it does eventually become a weapon. I wouldn't say that term is banned when thinking about the Old One, but I at least see the flakes not so much as weapons, but like a fork and knife. Like, do we think of those as weapons?

• 28:37Tristan Hughes?

  Depends on the, uh, depends on how the dinner party's going, I guess. But anyways, moving on from that, we've been dancing around this next question, which I'm sure many of you listening are shouting at already. We've talked a lot about the, the, the rocks themselves. Emma, the big question is, who? Who are the potential candidates that were making these tools around 3 million years ago?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yes, who is the question? And it's been a question for decades and decades of research. The history of it is actually interesting because the first Oldauan stone tools were discovered at Oldavai Gorge in Tanzania in Bed 1. And initially, they were attributed to a skull that was nearby. The skull is OH5 and it was called Zinjanthropus. Nowadays, Paranthropus is the term we generally use for this group. Its nickname is the Nutcracker Man because it had enormous teeth, like four times the size of our teeth today, and really robust jaws and cranial features that supported

• 29:48Speaker 01

  robust chewing musculature. So it was nicknamed the Nutcracker, likely wasn't eating nuts, but that was an idea a while ago because it had such heavy chewing musculature and such strong jaws. Now, initially, Zinjanthropus was credited with the first Oldauan tools, but it was only a year later that they discovered another hominin with a slightly larger brain and smaller teeth and an associated partial hand that seemed to have dexterity. And this was then named Homo habilis, which you might have been familiar with. And that means handyman. So Homo habilis, poor Zinjanthropus was the toolmaker for one year.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  And then Homo habilis was discovered as a better candidate for the Oldauan tools. And since then, there's been the assumption, which I think is still true, that Homo habilis is the primary maker of Oldauan tools. But there's always been a question mark about how much Zinjanthropus now renamed Paranthropus. So I'll call it Paranthropus from now on. How much Paranthropus could have also been making and using tools? Because they overlap very heavily with the Oldauan in space and time, the same way that Homo habilis does.

• 31:05Tristan Hughes?

  First of all, I mean, Paranthopus is such a fascinating species. I remember looking at the skulls that they have and they've always got a crest in the middle of the head. Really, really fascinating. But I guess the thing to highlight there straight away is, obviously, we are Homo sapiens. So Homo habilis is on our line, I guess, but Paranthopus is not.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you. I forgot to say that. Homo habilis is a member of genus Homo. It's the first species in genus Homo, which is the genus we belong to. And it's our ancestor, or our presumed ancestor. Paranthopus is an offshoot lineage that ends up going extinct. So it's like our extinct aunts and uncles. It's not a direct ancestor to us. So that is another reason that Homo habilis being the first toolmaker made so much sense, because today, we're the toolmakers. Like, that's who we are. And our lineage has been toolmakers, undoubtedly, including Homo habilis. That is what we do. But the question now is, is

• 32:06Speaker 01

  our lineage the only toolmaker, which is what many people believed for a long time? And I think recent evidence, though, has, especially the discovery of the Lomacuan, has made us have to say, you know what, maybe our own lineage isn't the only makers of stone tools, and we have to start thinking of other scenarios.

• 32:32Speaker 03

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• 33:35Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's continue the story then, Emma. So if we go to the earlier Old One and the Lomacrian sites, who were the contenders, you know, at that time?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So beyond just the Homo versus Paranthropus for the Old One, when the Lomacrian was discovered, this is 3.3 million years ago. Homo habilis doesn't appear until 2.8. A species's true first appearance is usually longer ago than the first fossil we have, but half a million years is quite a long time. It's a bit of a stretch to think that Homo would have been the makers of the Lomacrian tools since they don't enter the fossil record until 500,000 years later. The Lomacrian really shook up this idea that genus Homo was the inventor of stone tools. And the most likely candidates for the Lomacrian are hominins

• 34:26Speaker 01

  that we know from that time period that are members of a different genus. We have Australopithecus afferensis, which is known from the iconic fossil Lucy, if you're familiar with Lucy. It's a species of Australopithecine that lived in the same time period as the Lomacrian industry lived and overlaps regionally where we find the Lomacrian tools. Another hominin called Kenyanthropus platiops, which isn't part of the genus Australopithecus, but is quite similar to Australopithecus in a lot of its features, is known specifically from West Turkana, Kenya, and is alive in that time period. So it's Kenyanthropus platiops and Australopithecus

• 35:08Speaker 01

  afferensis that are the hominins that make the most sense for the Lomacrian if we're looking at which hominins are alive at the right place in the right time.

• 35:17Tristan Hughes?

  So, I mean, to summarize then, Emma, the research is suggesting that the earliest evidence we have for modified rocks comes from species not from our genus. Well, I think, I guess that's it. Comes from species not from our genus, yes.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And whether or not they're on our lineage is unknown, or at least debated. But the fact that they're not in genus Homo is the headline because for a long time, I mean Homo habilis is named for making and using tools. And making and using tools was part of the definition for us and our, the other members of genus Homo. So having a toolmaker, especially the very first toolmaker that wouldn't be in genus Homo, is very different than what the assumption had been for a long time.

• 36:12Tristan Hughes?

  So what do you think this can tell us, Emma, about these early human species that we still know very, very little about? And I guess also about toolmaking, yes, this far back in time. Like, is it at all possible that we might find evidence of modified rocks that might come from other lineages, maybe more closely aligned with primates and so on going forwards?

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting you say that because there's also been a lot of work published recently about non-human primate tool use. And it's a lot more similar to hominid tool use than we initially thought. There are primates that produce flakes that are nearly identical to the flakes that we find in the archaeological record. But the main difference is they don't intentionally produce the flakes and they don't use the flakes. The flakes are just byproducts of other activities that they're doing that are more pounding focused. But actually, these flakes even form archaeological records and they go back in time thousands of years. So there's archaeological records for non-human primates now. So that really muddies the waters.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  However, I want to emphasize, because I get this question a lot. I don't think that hominin archaeological accumulations could have been made by non-human primates, because we don't just have the flakes, we also have the cut marks on the fossils that they were used for, which is something non-human primates don't do. They don't use the flakes for tasks, and they also don't use them to process meat. And we also have evidence of tool transport from longer distances, which isn't something non-human primates do, does. So I don't think that this calls into question the earliest archaeological assemblages, but it certainly broadens our idea of who could be making modified stones.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  It's not just humans, it's not just Homo, it's not just hominins, it's a variety of primates.

• 38:13Tristan Hughes?

  But, as you were saying there, Emma, and this seems really, really important then, the intentional creating of flakes to then be used as tools for various different tasks, as you've highlighted, from cutting meat to cutting plants and creating wooden objects as well, which imagine if they'd survived, that'd be incredible. Does that still feel, you know, in the story of our human evolution, seven million year old story, there and there abouts, that this is, you know, roughly three million years ago, this is a big kind of step forward, this is a big cognitive leap, that deliberate creating, you know, modification and creating of these tools for various purposes?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the intentionality is important, and also the level of investment. Rather than just using tools opportunistically, which is what I would say non-human primates tend to do, where they're using a stone that is already nearby to crack open, say, a nut, what hominins start to do is they really engrain tool use in the daily rhythms of their life, and in the way that they're using their landscapes and foraging for both food resources and stone resources. When I mentioned how The hominins at the site I work at were foraging over 10 kilometers to get rocks. And that's something that non-human primates don't do.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  If you think about it, that implies a level of investment and importance to tool use that it's beyond just picking up something nearby to achieve immediate solution. It means that they're really starting to rely on tool use and invest in tool use in the same way that they would invest in food resources. And this, I think, is where you get a shift from a non-human primate style of tool use to something that then becomes uniquely human. Because the way we use tools nowadays, we use tools to solve adaptive problems and modify our environments in a way that no other animal does. And the first thing we do, if a new environmental problem arises, or say there's a new disease

• 40:18Speaker 01

  or a new challenge, the first thing we do is we look to our tools to find a solution. And so that happens because, I think, millions of years ago, our ancestors started to really integrate tools into their way of life and their foraging strategies, and they became eventually dependent on it. That's one thing that's different with us. We're dependent on technology for survival and other species aren't.

• 40:45Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, there you go. The psychology of it and the ramifications down to present day. When you think about it, it's the passing down of that archaic knowledge. You know, can you imagine these groups teaching their young, you know, this is how you make one of these tools, this is where you get the stones from, or we've gone to a new area, this is, we need to find a new source of these stones. And then, but it's that passing on of that technology that endures for, was it many, many thousands of years, is it?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  The Oldauan industry is over a million years.

• 41:17Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, okay. So goodness knows how many generations of these early humans across Africa, they continue knowing this technology and sharing it to our generations.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they also take it out of Africa. So the earliest migrations out of Africa, they take the tools with them. And there's Oldauan tools found as far away as China, even 2 million years ago.

• 41:40Tristan Hughes?

  Wow. And so how long is the Oldauan industry around for? Because if my memory serves me right, The next big stage, it's the hand axes, it's the more complex tool. So how long is it, is the Olduan thriving until we then see it's almost, dare I say, replacement by early humans?

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question and it's a complicated one, as most questions about human origins are. The next industry is the Ashulian, which is, as you're describing, hand axes, bi-faces. It's where they're shaping cores rather than just concentrating on the flakes. That appears potentially as early as 2 million years ago. Definitely a lot of sites pop up by 1.7 million years ago. However, Olduan industry persists alongside the Ashulian in many places. So it isn't just like a replacement that happens at a particular point in time. You start to see Ashulian assemblages get more numerous around 1.7 and later.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  But you can still actually get Olduan industries, I mean, really up until now. So I'm not even sure that there was a full extinction or a replacement of the Olduan industry. But it becomes the less prominent industry by 1.7.

• 42:57Tristan Hughes?

  It's amazing to think whether like, you know, what we would see is very simple. Stone tool, the Olduan tool was, you know, for early humans for almost a million years. Maybe the most important objects in their communities because of all the functions it had. Emma, is there still so much more still to learn out in Africa at your site and elsewhere in Africa? About, you know, these earliest tools and what they can teach us about these early humans?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And I think the discovery of the Lomacuan, because it pushed back the origins of stone tool technology so much further in time than what we were currently thinking about. We've started to look in places that are older than what we normally would have looked at for stone tools. And you see, ever since the discovery of the Lomacuan, and especially after Nyanga was published in 2023. There's just so many early Olduan sites that are getting published where it was only a handful of sites that were Olduan. Than two million years old. Just a few years ago, we now have a collection of sites that are two point six and older.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  And even in the last six months, there was a two point seven five million year old Oldowan site published. So I think it's only a matter of time, maybe before the Oldowan gets pushed back even further. And part of that is just because we didn't think the Oldowan went back further than two point six. And we didn't think there was anything before it until relatively recently. So the field has to catch up in terms of funding and also leading field projects that are looking in earlier deposits. Because no one is going to look at it in deposits that are three million years old until there's some evidence that there would be tools there. So now everyone is starting to look more carefully in older deposits. And I think that's going to just increase our sample.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  And that will help us to understand the emergence of the Oldowan and how it might relate to the Lamequian even more.

• 44:52Tristan Hughes?

  Because my last question was going to be, Emma, you know, aside from pushing back the age, pushing back the dates even further. I mean, what other new information could actually be found out about these early people? Just from finding more and more of these very early tools. But it sounds like there are still many areas that can be learnt more about.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, one key question I think is about the relationship of the Lamequian to the Oldowan. Whether they were just two separate inventions that the Lamequian disappeared and the Oldowan emerged then much later. Or whether perhaps the Lamequian was more persistent and widespread than is currently recognized. And there could be a link between the Lamequian and the Oldowan. There are research groups that do probabilities based on the ages of sites that say that really we should be considering that the Lamequian and the Oldowan might not represent an industry that went extinct and then a new industry that originated. But they could be linked. And if we find more sites that would fill that in

• 45:52Speaker 01

  and help us to understand whether the Lamequian was the precursor to the Oldowan in a way that we can actually trace through time. Another big question, well, clearly what we talked about is who made the earliest stone tools? That's a difficult question to answer, but having a greater sample of both archaeological assemblages and also hominid fossils, it helps us to.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Look at the overlap between hominins and tools and it increases the resolution, the more fossils and the more assemblages we find. And in the last year, I mentioned, we have an early Oldowan assemblage published that wasn't published before, but we also have Paranthropus published in Ethiopia, which is a region that we didn't know Paranthropus from before. So it increases the range of Paranthropus and then adds Paranthropus as a question mark next to some assemblages from Ethiopia. So the fossil record is such a small portion, a snapshot of who was alive where and what assemblages were where, at what place in time. And the more we grow the number of fossils and the number of Oldowan and Lomacuan occurrences,

• 46:59Speaker 01

  the more we can really start to understand the relationships of different hominins to tools.

• 47:04Tristan Hughes?

  Emma, really, really exciting times. I think we'll wrap up there. Lovely to mention Paranthropus again. Anytime we can give Paranthropus, it's time in the sunlight. That's good with me. Emma, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really glad that you invited me because I love that this podcast is about history and I like how the Oldowan and the Lomacuan can be grouped in with human history because I really think that it is relevant to everything we do today is thinking about the origin of these technologies.

• 47:41Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr Emma Feinstein talking all of things. The first tools, how humans made that cognitive leap to modify rocks, to modify stones some three million years ago in Africa. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening. We love doing human evolution ones. They always seem so popular with you too. So don't worry, we'll be doing more around the story of our distant, distant, distant ancestors. You love it. We love recording them. There is much more to come. In the meantime, if you've been enjoying the ancients, then please make sure that you're following the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we really appreciate

• 48:26Tristan Hughes?

  that. Lastly, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 48:38Tristan Hughes?

  That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.